2016 Grizzly Football Coaching Staff Finalized | KPAX
Montana head football coach Bob Stitt has his new staff locked into place for the 2016 season. MISSOULA – University of Montana head football coach Bob Stitt has his new staff locked into place. Former secondary and special teams coach Jason Semore moves into the role of defensive coordinator, while former defensive ends coach Brian Hendricks will now oversee the defensive line. Joining UM from…
"You know the secret of death. But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?" Khalil Gibran
Every day upon waking I hear a low hum. The hum is the presence of every human being I have crossed paths with on this earth. This constant humming vibration greets me as I wake and follows me through the day. Some of these voices guide me through the rhythm and tempo of my life. On Sunday August 10th, 2014 a beat skipped, the tone was permanently altered, a strong voice was silenced. Some silences are greater than others. Some people more present to me. Brian Hendricks passed away, Professor Hendricks, B is a person who inextricably altered the course of my life. To say he was a teacher that taught me, seems like such an understatement. It was more than that. It was a spiritual and artistic awakening. I first met him by taking a third year film course entirely dedicated to Andrei Tarkovsky. I knew nothing about them, I took the course on a whim. If you told me that Brian and Andrei would alter my very state consciousness I would have never believed you. At the time I had been utterly disappointed by the unviersity’s theatre program overran with stagnation and nepotism. I was going to give up on art and just be a history major entirety. An accountants truth was going to be the life for me. Except this course. Something about it drew me. I signed up for it once but the course was full or I never showed up or it didn’t fit in my timetable. Next semester I tried again. It was held in a small dank room. A relic of the 70’s in a building known specifically for its maze like quality. The chairs and tables where connected to each other. I sat down in a room packed with people. Students standing, leaning on the walls, crossed legged in the isles and even sitting on the old four foot high heating vents. There at the head of class stood a man with his head on fire. Not just his red hair but his ideas. He welcomed us and quickly cut the crap. Then proceeded to culled the herd. “Are you here for an easy course? Are you here for an A ? Come talk to me afterwards in my office hours we can make that happen but ask yourselves is that all? Is this all for you ? University is becoming a place where students write papers they don’t want to write and professors mark papers they don’t want to read. It is devastating. People don’t come here to learn anymore, this is slowly becoming a place where learning is not possible. They say everyone needs a plan and future, a career. Let me tell you something the jobs you will have tomorrow you don’t even know the name of today. They may not exist, you will create them. If you want to learn, come to this class and I will make sure of it but come to learn.” He was a rogue professor and a revolutionary. Here he was on the first day of class questioning the very same decaying system he was employed in. He warned of the business of education. I couldn’t really understand then, I was freshly 20 but I could not forget. I told people, I repeated his sentiment paraphrased. I knew it was radical, he was radical. He thought he was rambling and frequently apologized for it. These ravings of a mad man were the greatest lectures I have ever heard. More than just class, this was life, he was telling us the truth as he saw it. There are few people that I have met who can tell me the truth and even fewer hold positions of authority. He believed in the potential we had. To create, to learn, to be present, to grow, to absorb, to really think. I joined the cult of Hendricks and believe me it was a cult following. I took all his courses and I knew my fellow members since they were also there at every class, at his office hanging out during office hours talking about Pink Floyd, Jung, Apocolapyse Now, anything and everything worth talking about. These topics and more were the kind no one else would talk to you about let alone seriously and sincerely. I can picture him in front of every classroom giving a lecture, introducing a film, talking about life. Weaving in and out of all these varied subjects, seamlessly. I hate my flawed brain for not being able to remember every single word he said like a recorder. I hate you memory, you tease, Everything is blurry with only the edges outlined. What I know for certain is how I felt. How he made us feel. The excitement for his class, the joy at seeing the movie lists on his syallabus especially an international film course where he told me that he wanted to travel back in time and watch the films that he watched during his degree. He even put in some Bergman on there for me. I will never forget the anecdotes about the student who filmed his home Lynch style and left the video on his door step and how he would joke that inorder to get an A the student should have been braver and filmed inside the house ! Or the way things used to be in his film school days where you just read scripts or watched a Fellini movie only to take note of how lamps differed in every scene but how they were organic and thematically relavant. That a great filmmaker's films were so precise that you could watch it through set pieces. In his art and direction film course he gave me a chance to be an artist. He gave me the opportunity to learn to use Super 8 film. I learned how to develop film by hand with the guided help of his T.A Scott Amos. The hours spent in the dark room in solitude feeling film and reaching into ice cream buckets were times of deep reflection and meditation ( sometimes great frustration!). I made five shorts and he never stopped asking me when my next one was coming. The truth is I have grown into a coward. I stopped filming. I found a great passion and deserted it. I will never forget the parties at Lucky. He knew how to hold a film screening. He gave his students a taste of being artists. I knew him when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. I remember after one class when we had watched Bergman’s Wild Strawberries he told me about his journey towards facing death. How this movie resonates differently with him now. Closer. It was touching cause he was real. He was a real human being. Unafraid to be present, to be raw, to be honest. It was a formative conversation. I don’t know many professors that let you see them as humans let alone speak candidly about the human condition. Now in this silence and I am trying to fill the space with memories. I am trying to go back and dig up more. So that I can create a treasure chest of goods. Horde it in the cavernous recess of my mind. I hadnt spoken to him in few years and I regret it. What he built over the years is the tools to perform this task, to do this work. I believe he is okay, he is with God. He would hate me sulking and grieving. He would want us all to live. All of us to be joyous, the happiest people on earth. So in turn, I invite you to take a trip with me to this space Brian hollowed out. Let's do more than the day to day. Go on an adventure even if it doesn't involve leaving your home. Use Cinema. Read to escape. Be to create. Talk about art, philosophy and psychology like they are matters of great urgency. B, know I'll try to really live like you have dared. Even though its hard but I am keeping you in my memories near by so don't think you are resting that easy. You have always asked so much from me without asking anything at all. Much Love.
There are three types of people in this world:
Those who think the truth can't be found, so they stop looking;
Those who think they've found the truth, so they stop looking;
And those who aren't sure if the truth can be found or not, but keep looking anyway – and those are the only people who learn anything.
Philip Seymour Hoffman, the world’s greatest actor. No votes were cast, no ballots collected, no polls were taken. Although officially announced by Jon Stewart on the Daily Show in early October, anyone who has been actively watching film or theatre performances in the last decade would likely concur with that bold proclamation. Regardless of the medium and the size and shape of the role, Hoffman’s performances are plays onto themselves. One doesn’t need to have studied Stanislavski’s An Actors Handbook to perceive when an actor has become a master of his art. Put aside the Tony nominations for stage performances in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night and Sam Shepard’s True West and just consider one third of his thirty-six screen performances. In order of appearance: Scotty in Boogie Nights, Brandt in The Big Lebowski, Rusty in Flawless, Phil in Magnolia, Freddie in The Talented Mr. Ripley, Joseph in State And Main, Lester in Almost Famous, Wilson in Love Liza, Dean in Punch Drunk Love, Jacob in 25th Hour, Dan in Owning Mahowney and Truman in Capote.
Philip Seymour Hoffman ingests each of these complex and varied characters with an authenticity and subtlety that sets him apart from his contemporaries. No one has maximized their screen time more than he has. No one has captured the essence of the American everyman of the early 21st century with more sincerity and conviction than he has. These men can be both lonely and funny, aggressive and vulnerable, hopeful and defeated, lost and found, often at the same time. He has captured the distinction between seeming and being and his characters stay with the audience long after the films have ended. It appears he doesn’t choose a role unless he feels the role has chosen him; that he can become the character rather than play it. He is operating with an intelligence and a level of commitment that both inspires the film’s world and the spectator’s world. We recognize ourselves in his honesty. We absorb Pushkin’s “sincerity of emotions”, the “feelings that seem true in given circumstances.” We are exposed to the art of the actor and the heart of the character every second he is on screen.
Philip Seymour Hoffman is not going to buy into the ‘world’s greatest actor’ and that’s what adds to his cachet. He has humility. He has talent. He has artistry. He has Capote. He has momentum. We talked to Philip by phone from New York.
“The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.” Walt Whitman, Leaves Of Grass
[Interview by Brian Hendricks / Photo by Jenny Gage & Tom Betterton]
8:22 AM. The phone rings to say that Philip is running late but will be calling within the next ten minutes. 8:36, the phone rings, the sound of furniture and then silence. Begin to hear someone breathing on the other end. A few deep breaths later…
Brian Hendricks. — Hello?
Philip Seymour Hoffman. — Yes. Hello?
— Philip?
— Brian?
Pleasantries are exchanged. Philip sounds a little tired but attentive. His meditative and relaxed tone is conducive to conversation.
— So how is your schedule these days?
— It’s been kind of crazy. Yeah, I was in D.C. yesterday, flying around doing stuff. But it’s all good.
— First I wanted to thank you for doing this. I know you’re busy. And thanks for this film. “Capote” is the kind of film that really makes us celebrate the medium.
— Ahh! Thank you. I appreciate that.
— And as a producer you must be feeling pretty solid.
— Pretty relieved (laughs).
— The thing that really distinguishes “Capote” as a film is its incredible restraint, keeping it so compressed. And I think its intelligence.
— Yes. Yes. It’s focused, you know. It’s Bennett Miller’s doing. We all had a part in it but Bennett had a focus that was undeniable from the beginning to the end. You know, there was never a question with Bennett about what the film was about or how to tell it. And that helps a lot.
— The British director, Michael Powell, referred to a film he made back in 1951, “Tales of Hoffman.” (Philip chuckles) He referred to it as totally composed film. This would be where the casting, direction, writing, cinematography, set design, etc., coalesce in way that can’t really be anticipated.
— Right (laughs). I don’t think it can ever be anticipated. We don’t know when a film is going to call us. But I did have a feeling about it with the casting. I remember when we finally got everybody to play those roles. I remember having moments of feeling so grateful that we got who we got. That coalesced you know. But I don’t think we ever had the feeling it was going to.
— The filming is over but in some ways the process is just beginning in terms of getting the film out to the people who need to see it. When you took this on did you sort of know as a producer that you were going to be with this much longer than you have with films in the past?
— I did. But like everything, I did, but I didn’t know what that would mean exactly. But I knew that I was going to have to and be willing to put myself out there in a way that I haven’t for a film before. It’s much easier when I’m proud of it. I’m proud of this film and that makes it easier. But it’s a different area. I’ve never done a film where I’ve had to cover so much ground afterwards. I’ve talked to some pretty well known actors, highly respected actors that talk about that. You think your job is just making the film and then you realize what happens when it comes out (laughs). The reactions from them have been kind of interesting, how they feel about it.
— A Capote quote that says a lot about him, “Finishing a book is just like you took a child out to the backyard and shot it.”
— Yeah. I read that. I think that has to do with grieving something. It’s so strong, so visceral, so violent an expression. You put your heart and soul into something over a long period of time and then it’s done and people are witnessing it and having their own personal reactions. There’s something sad that happens. You don’t really talk about it so much because people are going to think you’re crazy, or sentimental, or soft or something. But really there’s an act of having to kill it off for yourself. It really does become public domain in a way. It’s not yours anymore and that’s really sad. And I’ve had that feeling, you go to a film festival somewhere and it starts to screen and you’re in the back of the theatre after you’ve been introduced and the film starts to play and someone rushes in who’s late (laughs). And anxiety begins to set into you because this film is like your child and really people are just living their lives, and you realize like a child you’ve just got to let it go somehow. It’s a very weird experience.
— And I guess this one even more so because you’re used to having to withdraw and surrender roles but with “Capote” you’ve given birth to the film as well as the character. And is that withdrawal something… Well I don’t imagine it’s ever going to become easy.
— It’s not an easy thing. It’s hard to let go of it. Hard to not want to keep watching over it, taking care of it and not let anyone hurt it (laughs). It sounds crazy but it’s true. But you do have to let it go. You do have to move on to the next thing. You have to find passion in some other place and you have to fall in love with something else. And that always takes falling out of love in some way with whatever it was before. I guess I’ll find that out, what that means.
— I would imagine with all your other interests, moving on to other roles would be the immediate solution to at least be able to take that part of you into something new.
— That’s right. I was supposed to direct a reading of A Basic Training Of Pavel Hummel at the Public [Theatre] the other day. And I thought, God, I can’t do that. I’m just too busy, I haven’t even read it yet. And in the back of my mind what I was saying to myself was, “You have to do it.” This is exactly what you need to do. And I remember I did, I showed up and did the reading and I remember how grateful I was after I did it. Because it was a whole day where I was starting to let go and move forward. Find interest in another project. That’s what you need to do I think.
— Capote comparing a child to a book. He wasn’t a father, I know that you are. Does playing characters like Capote who was abandoned as a child inform your own role as a father? Help you stay grounded?
— Yeah. Being a father is, well, when you’re with your child you’re with your child. And if you get distracted when you’re with your child, you’re very aware that you’re distracted and your child is there. What I experience now is there’s something about your love for a child that is so unconditional. An unconditional love you’ve never felt before. And it does put things in perspective as people have always said. There’s really nothing you feel comfortable putting before your child. And I think that is very helpful in anybody’s life but definitely in an artistic life. The chaotic kind of gypsy life that artists lead. To have a child that is just a constant love affair (pause). But with the quote, there is an analogy there. A piece of work that you produce because really what everyone is doing in coming to a film; all the actors, the DP, the editor and the director and everybody, is they’re bringing hopefully the best of themselves and all the baggage that comes with that. They’re bringing the most vulnerable, youthful, impressionable side of themselves. Everybody’s attachment to the film is quite like the love for a child I think.
— Absolutely. Yes. Your multi-faceted interests as an actor, producer and theatre director and teacher. Do you ever feel that something has to give or does one aspect of your creative life feed another and you’re able to just go with the flow?
— To do different things? Yeah, well like I said about this reading the other day. When I was working with these actors for six hours and then we did the reading at the Public and I remember when we did the reading that night and it was a full house and David Rabe who wrote the play was there, people were there, and I wanted to sit in the back by myself and I did, and that’s a good thing. That’s a good experience for me. To not be the actor. To be not only the director who hopefully has helped some people along to do as good a job as they can. But then to watch it as an audience member and to go through that experience of watching other people succeed or struggle right in front of you. It’s a whole different part of me that I can experience and also learn about myself as an actor watching it through their eyes and that’s important to me in my life. I don’t think I’ll be able to go through my life without doing that also because it’s a reprieve from the acting part, but it’s also a learning experience. It also creates an extraordinary empathy for me towards other actors because I see my faults and mistakes in them. I see my success in them. I see everything and it allows me to become less cynical about it all. I don’t think I’ll be able to stop that. I definitely want to have both of those things.
— It seems like with your LAByrinthe Theatre, the analogy that comes to mind is like a workout gym where you can go and exercise your craft. There aren’t the commercial considerations and you can just go and do pure art.
— Yes. It is. It really is. That’s right. We have commercial considerations due to a budget but you’re right. We have a workshop production going on right now that opened last night. We have a show, we rehearse it for two weeks and put it up, small budget situation, tickets are low priced, we do fifteen performances. We had the first one last night and good work is good work. It doesn’t matter if it’s a film that five billion people see or if it’s a stage that eighty people are sitting at. And that’s what I saw last night. I saw some moments of some really fine work. And there’s no difference in this and some film that billions of people are seeing. It’s just the act of witnessing it and the pride that I have watching other actors and the director, to be able to discuss it afterwards, the ideas. You’re absolutely right, there’s a reprieve from the business paranoia, anxiety, and you are just there with the work that you do. Hugging, taking pride in sharing your appreciation with other artists and actors. And that’s a very satisfying thing. And John Ortiz who runs the company with me, he’s a founding member of the company, and we both feel that way about it.
— I like what David Mamet said about the theatre is always dying and being reborn. That sense that the theatre is often out of the spotlight but that’s where all the new life is coming from.
— Yes! You’re, he’s, absolutely right. All theatre thrives on the death and rebirth. Every night the show ends there’s a small death and some times you have a performance that’s not so good. And you feel like you’re failing and you’re humbled, but then you have the next night to rejuvenate it again, to repair those mistakes. There’s something very forgiving about the theatre as brutal as it can be. It’s a very forgiving place because there’s always an opportunity and that’s what it offers for sure.
— A Capote quote that I’m sure you are familiar with. “To me the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about but the inner music that words make.” Is what it’s about, the story and the plot, much more significant than just the feeling you get from the words?
— That’s very interesting what he says there. I get jazzed about what it’s about. I get jazzed about what something’s about early on. Something I really get off on is thinking about what it means and how does it reverberate through our culture and stuff. But there is a point as an actor where you can’t really act that stuff. What he’s saying is you can’t write about all of that in the sentence so you have to live it, write in the moment where all the little points come together and there is a difference. While you are making it there’s a pleasure and a struggle in creating the music. Creating the scene, the give and take, the energy in that, the pathos, whatever it is. If it’s done well, if you feel like you are succeeding, it’s incredibly satisfying and just the construction of it is satisfying. But I do think that in the beginning and the end I take a lot of pleasure in thinking about what the film is saying. All the questions it brings up. All the different meanings it could project on so many different people. I think that in the act of actually doing the acting work, it’s putting the parts together and making them function together as a whole that is very satisfying and it isn’t worrying about what it’s about.
— Great. With regard to leaving an imprint as a producer and the idea of film and theatre driving the dialogue or just providing entertainment. I’m assuming you would want to be more involved in dealing with issues that are important to the world and are helping to drive the dialogue?
— Yeah. I think what I would say is that I get more jazz when I think of the dialogue of what it is I’m doing could create. It’s a more exciting feeling to think that this could cause some kind of discussion. But that said, I do know there is a place for something that is diverting my attention towards something that just makes me laugh. Or something that just makes me cry. There is a place for those things. They are also incredibly important. We were doing the film festival junket, my girlfriend and I, we were in a hotel room somewhere and it was late and I turn on the TV and there’s a comedian on. And he was riffing on the subject of women versus men and he was hysterical. (laughs) He was so funny. And there was this fifteen minutes where I was just laughing. The things he was coming up with were just hysterical. I do in those moments think there is a place for this. That guy, he’s creating a dialogue. There is this fifteen minutes where I’m not thinking about me. I’m not thinking about all these other things. I’m taking pleasure in the insights someone has on the human condition. I definitely think, there are things I want to do, places I want to provide where people can just go and relax and hopefully have a good time. But I’m less inclined to do those things, that’s for sure, but I do respect them if they’re done well.
— They do say we’re learning the most when we’re laughing because we are often recognizing some kind of truth.
— Absolutely. And I think we’re also bombarded with that stuff. Most of it isn’t good. Most of it doesn’t make you laugh. Most of it doesn’t create any kind of relief or a real distraction of any kind. It usually disappoints. That’s why I have even more respect for those that actually do create that kind of thing and do it well. Because it’s so rare for someone to do that kind really well. Just taking joy in somebody actually creating something that’s kind of inspired and funny.
— It’s so interesting as well, the whole history of comedy and comedians. They are generally, in their own personal lives, often so depressed.
— Absolutely.
— Another Capote quote, “When God hands you a gift he also hands you a whip and the whip is intended for self-flagellation solely.” I’ve read that you’re very self critical and reasonably hard on yourself. I suppose it’s a given that the artist has to suffer to some degree to get anywhere?
— Capote couldn’t be more right about that. I think anyone who is lucky enough to come into tune with what the thing is they can do well will also begin to venture down the path of self -criticism. And I think that’s what he’s saying. And I don’t think that’s just the artist. That can be anyone who realizes, you know, I’m a damn good trial attorney. That’s where I’m supposed to be and if I deny that I’ll be denying something bigger than me. And so they don’t and they accept and they take it on and the minute that happens they know they will only accept the best of themselves in that profession. And yes, you can beat yourself up in that area for sure.
— Along the same lines, Truman said, “Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavour.” You are celebrated as a risk taker with the variety of roles you’ve played. Does it get harder to keep your edge and take risks as you become more established? More successful? And does it become more difficult as you get older to find the characters that will allow you to express different parts of yourself?
— It’s a tough question. I don’t quite know where I will land through this time now. I am definitely in a place where I don’t know what to do. And I try to trust that when I feel that way. It’s interesting because there are some things that will start tugging me in one direction, and something else will start tugging me in another. And what role should I play? And what thing should I do? I’m a little bit in doubt about that. The one thing I’m not is I know there are certain things I don’t want to do. And I’m taking solace in that thought. I can’t name what they are but I’ll know it when I see those things. That’s where I’m at. But you’re right. We are getting older and things change. Your interests change and there’s things you’ve explored before that you would like to leave alone now. And that’s how I feel. There are things I’ve explored before and I would like to leave them alone. There are certain things I know I haven’t explored and I don’t know how those things will manifest themselves in what character, in what story yet. That’s kind of open ended.
— The adventure continues.
— Yes.
— The editorial for this issue of “Hobo” is titled “The Road We’re On” and we’re sort of proposing the idea that despite the obvious chaos and cataclysm around us is that there’s a whole other spirit out there. That we’re actually moving forward. As an artist and as a father, thinking of the future for your son, how do you feel about that? From your vantage point, how does the world look?
— Oh, well, a bit scary. From the vantage point of having a son. I think that if I didn’t have son I might not be as concerned. I would be concerned for my fellow man and my country and like you said, all the things that have been happening to this country, just natural disaster wise, war across the world and just everything that’s going on all over the place. I’m very concerned about that (pause). But when you have a child there’s almost a panic, like what is it going to be like when he’s forty? It seems so far away and will you be there and will he be gratified that you brought him here?
— I know. I know.
— (Laughs) You know? It’s a lot to take on and it’s something to definitely get over (laughs). You do think about that. And right now? I’m glad that editorial is optimistic.
— It almost has to be.
— There’s almost no other choice, you can’t just bepessimistic, I guess you’re right. It has to be optimistic. And I would say, I do think from my vantage point, people say there is no good theatre anymore. There’s no good movies being made. Just in the business we’re talking about, I still see great films being made. I still see great plays. I still see wonderful theatre. I still see great actors doing great work. People who are in my generation and people who are younger than me, I still see people doing it. I don’t see it dying. It’s being revived all the time. The one thing that is positive to me: in the last five years I’ve never heard politics and the state of the world talked about more than in the last five years amongst people in this country. I remember being in college and high school, my twenties, people didn’t really talk about that stuff. We lived in a day with Clinton where people just weren’t so worried about what was going on. And I do think that is a very positive thing. People are much more in tune, and care much more, and are more immediate about what they want to know and what they want changed. What they want to ask of the world they live in. I know it wasn’t like that ten years ago.
— Right. That is promising. As “Capote’s” momentum builds and I know it’s just beginning and is going to really take off. Has the response caught you by surprise a little bit and are you enjoying the ride so far?
— It might sound like false humility but when we were making the film we were really struggling. We didn’t know if it was going to work out. And I think it made us work harder and harder every day we showed up at the set. I think there were glimmers of hope when we thought we might be on to something. We still didn’t know what that would mean. It was when we were watching a rough assembly after we had done some re-shoots and I was sitting with Bennett and Tellefsen and I remember looking at Bennett and smiling and saying we might be on to something here. And more with, ‘you’ might be on to something here because it’s really more in his hands. But still even with that we were just making a film that wouldn’t embarrass us (laughs). The fact that it might not beembarrassing was still just a relief. But I think when it was all done, when they eventually got it to its final stage and we heard the music to it, I thought, I like the film, and we’ll have to send it out there and see what happens. But as to what the reaction is as of today? As of now? Beyond, way beyond anything we expected to happen when we started to try to get people to give us money to try and make it. Way, way, way beyond. And I have to remember that, we all have to try and remember that, just to stay grateful rather than turn into Capote (laughs). I can only imagine how Truman would be dealing with this (more laughter).
— Well this is just it. I love his line about life being a moderately good play with a badly written third act. (Philip laughs) This is likely a stupid question but the idea of something called The Third Act, the story of Truman Capote from 1965 to 1984. “Capote 2” is probably not in the radar, but is that something as an actor and as a producer that might be of interest to you?
— To do that part?
— Yes.
— I wouldn’t. I mean I would be interested in seeing someone else do it.
— Okay. That’s interesting.
— I actually would. I think it would be fascinating if ten years from now that some actor and some director and some writer, were to take Capote from the Black and White Ball to Joanne Carson’s house in Los Angeles in 1984.
— Yes. Exactly.
— There’s something about that that could be quite fascinating. But it’s difficult and I think that’s why Danny (Dan Futterman, screenwriter) focused on this section because his life, if you read the biography, what ever comes before so informs what comes after. Like anybody’s story but his really needs it. You really need to know. With his writing In Cold Blood, you really do get the full scope of his kind of existence and who he is, in a way that the other sections might be much more difficult. The other sections are less about him as a literary figure and more about him as a public figure. Especially the third chapter, the third act, and that’s always trickier terrain because you’re not focusing in on one plot point that’s going to focus all these different elements. But I would like to see someone try to tackle that idea because what he turned into is, I don’t know how you say this but he’s like the poster child for what could go wrong (laughs). In celebrity, in the capitalistic society we live in (laughs). He becomes the poster child. And if someone did that right it could be quite potent.
— And it’s a familiar tale, the fall of the writer, the creative personality. The history of literature has almost been… the books have long outlived, been more successful than the third act of the people that wrote them.
—Yes. Yes. If you read the biography you couldn’t find a better ending for the film. Joanne Carson tells us that when he died, the night he died, he said… I remember reading it and it crushed me, what she said was true, he was dying and he said the name of Babe, you know, Babe Paley, who he hadn’t seen, who he had been separated from for years at this juncture and then his mother. (Pause and slight laughter) You know, this fifty-nine year old man dying alone in Los Angeles and he’s calling for his mother! You know what I mean?
— Honestly. Yeah.
— He’s calling for his mother and he’s calling for the only other woman who he probably saw as his mother. And his real mother killed herself and the other woman basically told him to go fuck himself (laughter). It can’t get any worse. If someone could lead up to that in some kind of respectful way and end with that kind of pathos. That could be a really cathartic thing.
— While researching my review of the film I found an old 68 Playboy with the Truman Capote interview. He’s talking about Hickock and Smith being the best friends he ever had. That’s pretty lonely.
— A very lonely person, extraordinary lonely. There’sprobably lots of people who thought they were one of his great friends and they actually weren’t. That I think is a perfect example of a lonely person. And I don’t think he was bullshitting when he said that. That’s what makes it such a great tale are Hickock and especially Smith. We focus more on Smith, but like those relationships, because of the dynamics and what they needed from each other caused an intimacy on a level that I don’t think he was even comfortable with.
— Such an amazing cautionary tale isn’t it?
— Yes.
— On another note, I read somewhere that you were comparing acting to golfing. (Much laughter from Philip) I’m a golfer myself, a 12 handicap, I try to play once or twice a week.
— Oh that’s great.
— The idea that some days you have it all figured out and other days you’re back to square one again.
— Yeah, you’re just slicing it all over the place. It’s so true. Oh God, it’s maddening.
— Do you get a chance to play?
— I do, I did play. I played when I was a kid. We played at this nine hole public course, at the time we thought it was the best golf course in the world but it was just the crappiest…
— (Phone cuts out) Hello?
— I’m still here. I think someone just beeped me. But I do relate it to that. People think well don’t you just get up there and act, do your thing. Unless you want to see me make an ass of myself, I guess I could go up there and… it is, it’s kind of like golf.
— It’s humbling.
— Yes it’s humbling.
— Just a couple of more things Philip. Winnipeg, Manitoba. “Capote” was shot there. How did Canada treat you?
— Canada was great. We knew that Kansas, 1959, would not be found in Kansas in 2005, 2004. So they went up there, and they looked up there and they showed me the photos that they took and it was uncanny. It was really uncanny, the resemblance, how they paired up together. So it treated us very well, visually, it was just perfect. But it was one cold place. It really is the coldest place I’ve ever been to.
— (Laughter) Absolutely. Another aspect of this film that I loved, the cinematography, the visual snapshots that create that “out there” space of Kansas so efficiently and quickly. And the muted colours, the browns and greys, the whole palette. The film is just really beautiful to look at.
— Yes. Adam did a great job. Adam Kimmel.
— Yes. Well, I think I’ve explored most of my questions here. I really appreciate you taking the time for this Philip and thanks again for creating one of the best films I’ve seen in the last couple of years.
— Oh thank you. Thank you very much Brian.
Cause, you know, it’s always a little bit of a lie, whenever you read a profile on anybody, that there is any narrative to any of our lives. As a writer when you’re writing the profile you have to kind of create a narrative. ‘He was born in Austin and then he did this and then he was in Dead Poets Society and then he was in Training Day and then he got married and then he got divorced and now he’s in London.’ And you make it like there’s a beginning, middle and an end when, of course, life’s never really happened that way.” Ethan Hawke, London, July 2009
That’s true. Because there are at least forty-four other film roles to account for. The two novels he’s penned. The countless stage performances and plays he’s directed. His three films as a writer and director. A great piece he wrote on Kris Kristofferson for Rolling Stone. The book prizes he sponsors. And then there’s all the stuff that’s really going on. So, being the writer, and needing to create a narrative, I will just say that the evidence of his journey speaks for itself. I tracked down Ethan in London where he’s playing Autolycus in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, and Trofimov in Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard.
He has three new films coming out, Daybreakers, Brooklyn’s Finest, and New York, I Love You, some film collaborations with Richard Linklater, a Sam Shepard play to direct, a third novel to finish, and an endless array of other dreams waiting to be realized. In short, perfect timing to discuss his ongoing adventures in the dark forest.
[Interview by Brian Hendricks / Photo by Ola Rindal]
Ethan Hawke. — Hey, Brian, is this you?
Brian Hendricks. — This is me, how you doing?
— I’m doing pretty well. I want to let you know that I read your interview with [Ralph Waldo] Emerson [Hobo #6] yesterday. That is such a fantastic piece. I couldn’t get over that. You gotta do more things like that.
— Well, I picked the whole idea of starting to do these posthumous interviews because I’m a bit of a quote fiend. Certainly Emerson, browsing through his stuff, I thought ‘this reads great as dialogue’. I felt like I had a great conversation with him.
— You did man! You did. It’s really going to make me go back and revisit him. I always forget how ahead of his time he was.
— My old secondhand copy of Emerson’s writings is never too far away because I find it’s the kind of book you can open anywhere and find something that is immediately profound and current.
— If you ever interview Emerson again, I really think you should ask him what it was like when he dug up his dead wife. I’d really like to know more about that. Have you ever heard that story? [Editor’s note: Ethan is referring to a journal entry wherein Emerson writes, “I visited Ellen’s tomb and opened the coffin.”]
— I do know the story and, yeah, reading the biography of Emerson reminds you that these guys left such a legacy of inspiration and perseverance and creative juice. His own life, I mean, his son died, his wife died, there was a lot of bad stuff going on around him. I guess his writing probably in the end elevated him above that.
— Yeah, you know, he lost several brothers, right?
— Yeah, exactly.
— Several brothers that were important to him. It goes to show you you don’t get something for nothing.
— I think in your own career as an actor and as a writer - certainly the Beats and Salinger, Joseph Campbell, the follow-your-bliss stuff - you must take that stuff pretty close to the heart in terms of your own journey.
— It’s funny, I hoard quotes as well, you know, things that inspire you. Those guys, all the ones that you’ve mentioned, have certainly been inspirations to me. Yesterday, for example, I did a Shakespeare play and a Chekhov play, both of them in a day here in London. What’s fascinating about it is going back in time, you know, getting a laugh on a line that somebody thought up four hundred years ago. To actually puncture the consciousness of an audience in 2009 with a four hundred-year-old idea and make them laugh with it? It’s an amazing feeling to be the vessel of that.The same is true with the more profound ideas of those plays. I’m thinking right now about quotes in the Emerson piece about the continuation of time and the continuation of all beings connected to each other. When you do the plays you feel it. You feel whatever it was like in 1904 in Russia right before the first failed revolution attempt, and this dialogue between Trofimov and Lopakhin, which is kind of the communist idealist and the practical capitalist skirting around each other, you feel how that conversation resonates now versus how that conversation resonated then.
— The beauty of it is to realize that things that were spoken four hundred years ago are even more modern than stuff that’s going on now.
— This happens to me sometimes, I’ll go see a Cassavetes film or a Godard film or some Fassbinder thing and you’ll realize that they’re still so unbelievably modern. There’s new age thinkers right now that feel like they’re breaking new ground that are really just treading old transcendental theories.
— Absolutely.
— Even take Winter’s Tale, for example, the weird mix of magic realism. Trying to break down that play is very difficult.
— I’ve got a quote here from Margaret Livingstone talking about Winter’s Tale. She writes that, “The Winter’s Tale contains an astonishing number of art forms: A tragedy, a comedy, a pastoral, a tale, a dream vision, statues, songs and ballads, shepherds and shepherdesses dance, an anti-mosque, a poem, a picture and suggestions of a play within a play. Throughout the pastoral interlude, Autolycus acts as artist, stage manager, variously costumed actor and commentator. Seeing his guises deceive simple folk should make us question how art, either his or The Winter’s Tale’s, works on us. Perhaps the pockets of both audiences are being picked.” Does that resonate with you at all
— Well, this is one of the later Shakespeare plays. Some people, in a critical way, will say that it’s just a hodgepodge. It’s like a trunk. It’s like he just threw in all these half baked ideas that belong in other plays and just kind of tied them up together, kind of scratched them together. But for me, while that may be true, it works kind of like the Beatles’ White Album worked. There’s all these ideas in it, and all this madness in it, but there’s a certain sense to it and I think it’s actually tied up between Autolycus and the character Paulina. Paulina is the woman who makes the statue at the end, and also has conned her king, depending on how you look at it. I feel that Autolycus and Paulina are both real self-portraits by Shakespeare, that he’s kind of taking to task the role of the artist. The artist is like Paulina manipulating real events and taking tragedy and fascism and bureaucracy and moving it in such a way that it can be healed and transformed through beauty. On the other side you have the other artist, Autolycus, who is basically trying to entertain people in whatever way possible while he takes money out of their pocket for his own benefit and for his own self-aggrandisement. The play works as a kind of yin and yang play, they’re both shadow reflections of each other. The first statue’s incredibly stern and the other act has dildos joining in a satyr’s dance and all this kind of crazy mad sexuality. In the first act even kissing with inside lip is scandalous. The play’s absolutely unendingly fascinating and, while I have a passion for Chekhov and he is a glorious writer and incredibly simple, I really think Shakespeare was in a tier all by himself.
— I’d have to agree.
— My joke is if Shakespeare were as fun for the audience as it is for the actors, I don’t think anybody would do anything else. It’s so rewarding [to study]. You take even the name Autolycus. The character, he’s the child of Mercury. He’s a hero, half-man, half-god. This is a reference that Shakespeare’s making. He’s the God of Thieves and he’s the God of Alcoholics because Autolycus is the self-devouring wolf. The Greeks thought that the weird thing about wolves was they seemed to eat all the time and they were always hungry. This was Autolycus, that he was constantly stealing and constantly hungry. And he was constantly changing shape. He was mostly wolf but he could also, like a mouse or something, move his bones and he’d get through small holes and shape change himself. I mean, this is a reference you get from just your character’s name. It’s so thrilling. And then you watch how that informs the character’s behaviour throughout the play.
— It’s like you’re ultimately connected with all of history because you go all the way back to Greek myth where the name and the character, the son of Hermes, comes from and then you channel through Shakespeare. From the reviews I’ve been reading people have been commenting very favourably on your performance. It sounds like you’re channeling a bit of Bob Dylan and a bit of Jack Nicholson. Where did you find the source of that character for yourself?
— I’ve heard all that. It’s fun to have people reference a Shakespeare play with people like Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan and Axl Rose; that amuses me. Have you ever seen that documentary on Townes Van Zandt, Be Here to Love Me?
— I haven’t but I’ve heard something about it.
— He became the basis of that character for me. You know, he looks like the guy that you would be best friends with and he would pull a twenty dollar bill out of your pocket without blinking. And Sam Mendes was trying to set the whole play around the same period as the Chekhov play because we’re doing them in rep. If we set it in one period it made it a lot easier. So he set The Winter’s Tale in that period and it became very easy for me to transform all the poems and the things like that of Autolycus into a current Townes Van Zandt riff, kind of Americana bluesy… I mean, I know Townes didn’t live in 1904. I realize that, but it’s not a hard thing to imagine him living in 1904.
— It’s cool the way they’ve got the North American contingent, the actors playing the bohemians and they have the Brits playing the Sicilians.
— Yes, that works really well.
— You’ve been to Singapore, New Zealand, Spain, Germany. How long were your stints in each of those places?
— They were short but I think about two weeks in each spot. What was fascinating is [in Spain] they were having huge union strikes. You know, we’re living in a very interesting moment in history right now. And the Chekhov play was on fire in Spain. The people loved it. They kind of related to the titanic shifts, the moment where the earth underneath them was just shifting and they knew it. The old way of life was changing and they didn’t know what was next. There’s certainly that sense around the world right now, the way our environment is being affected, the whole globalization of everything, the way technology’s exploding at an exponential level creates this kind of fear, thrill, excitement, worry about the future. The night Barack Obama was elected president, in Brooklyn – we were doing it in Brooklyn – people were catcalling all over the street. You felt the play’s very much alive, at least in our consciousness as performers. The trouble with theatre is the tickets are so expensive that you’re relegated to talking to people who can afford to drop a thousand dollars on an evening. Then you have to go, like, all right, well, these people control the world and so why not have these ideas for them. But then they just sleep through the evening anyway and that’s depressing, whereas when you do it in a night where they give away the seats for ten bucks, the place explodes with joy. There’s some weird lesson in there.
— That’s the beauty of theatre, isn’t it, the fact that every performance you give is like an entity unto itself.
— It’s a living art form. It exists only in the moment. It’s witnessed only in the moment. You can’t go rent it. It’s not a unit of sale. It’s very difficult to commodify theatre. It’s a rock show, you know.
— Absolutely.
— There’s this weird thing, when you do movies, this illusion of immortality associated with celebrity and film, as if people still really care about Tyrone Power. I mean, I’m not saying I don’t. What I’m saying is “as if film stars don’t age and ultimately die”, you know. If somebody comes up to me on the street and says that they saw me do Hotspur at Lincoln Centre six years ago, there’s this kind of joy I have because I know that at one evening that person and myself were in the same room. They might remember something about the show, “it was the night that so-and-so’s understudy went on”, and that whole performance will come vividly back, versus if somebody comes up to me and says, “I rented Dead Poets Society last night”, I think, oh, cool. It’s not immortal the way I thought it was when I was younger.
— If you were just doing theatre, do you think you would miss film?
— Oh, God, I know I would. I have a passion for theatre and I think it is a beautiful way of living. It creates a better lifestyle. There’s something humbler about it. There’s something harder about it. But the magic of movies I can’t deny. When you watch the power that movies have to affect people and speak to them – I mentioned Dead Poets Society, the years that people have come up to me and talked about what carpe diem meant to them. Movies penetrate the void in a way that is amazing when they work. It’s frustrating when they don’t but when they really work, I mean, shit, you can make a little movie like Tape, this movie Richard Linklater and I made, it virtually is a no-show at the box office. Well, that movie’s probably been seen by, you know, millions of people at this point.
— I really wanted to talk to you about Tape because I teach film at the university here. When Tape came out that was maybe the most significant film I saw all year. I still think it’s an absolute showcase of you as an actor. Your performance in that film, the Aristotelian principles of time, action and place, everything happening within that context, the writing was so good. The filming was so inventive. I turned that film on to so many students.
— You’re making me really happy. I’m really proud of that movie.
— Yeah, it’s a very important film.
— Linklater’s a very fascinating person who really understands the fundamental difference between theatre and cinema and what they are. And he really wanted to use DV. We’d both seen Celebration right before that came out and we realized it was going to get impossible to release independent film; there were now going to be so many of them. Rick was able to make something that before would have been relegated to the theatre and made it cinematic in some strange way. If you talk to him about it he’d say it’s the hardest movie he ever edited in his life because he had this idea that, to really use DV well, he wanted it to be as if the room were completely covered in surveillance cameras, so that he would never return to a shot, which is a very fascinating idea. Throughout the history of film you’re always cutting from this shot to that shot, back to that angle, back to that angle. He wanted to never return to a previously used angle. I kept wondering, well, are we going to have a cut? Are we going to have a cut? And he kept saying, I’m only twenty minutes in and this thing’s impossible. Then it ended up turning out as well as it did. I was really pleased about that.
— That year, 2001, was the year that you did Training Day as well.
— People often give me credit for Training Day. People really like the film and I do too. But for me as a human being, it was really Tape that I felt was my first adult performance. I went onto the set of Training Day having just made Tape and I was hell bent to try to force myself to be as relaxed and have as much fun on this big studio movie as I had with Linklater in this tiny little motel room. Have the same kind of spontaneity and freedom, which I did not succeed at doing. It’s very easy, when you get on a movie with a lot of money and a big craft service truck and a big powerful movie star like Denzel Washington, to kind of lose all your creative juice. You just end up not wanting to fuck up and anybody who’s put in any sports knows you can’t ever play not to make a mistake, you know. You gotta play to win and play to have fun. But anyway, I’m glad you like that film.
— I love it a lot, and your other collaborations. Waking Life was such a neat film as well. Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, I reviewed those films again. I haven’t taught them yet but I certainly will in the future. Those films really resonate with a lot of people. Before Sunset is something that a lot of people would like to pull off but very difficult to do. The chemistry that you have with Julie Delpy, and capturing something I think that’s timeless, you must be very proud of that work as well.
— I think what Rick really excels at is taking an idea that everyone has and pulling it off. I remember when I saw Slacker, which was before I knew Rick, I remember thinking, I could do that. I wish I made that movie. Why didn’t I make it?
— That’s exactly what I thought.
— I felt like he made it before I had the chance to. I remember when I saw Dazed and Confused I felt the same way. I felt, like, oh, dammit, I wanted to make a film about all my friends the night we graduated high school. I’ve heard people say that about Before Sunrise. I mean, it’s a very classic idea. But he somehow manages to do them and to execute them well. He used to say on both Before Sunrise and Before Sunset that the thing about these movies was that the target was incredibly small. It needed to be a spot-on bulls-eye, or the whole thing would fall apart. You know, I feel that way about Chekhov. I’ve talked to other actors who feel the same way. When Chekhov goes well it’s almost like hitting the perfect bulls-eye or conjuring a spell or a sleight of hand magic trick where it just takes off all by itself. And you put no effort into it. Absolutely zero effort. Then you look behind you and something beautiful happened. With Rick and Julie and I, the truth of the matter is there’s a tremendous amount of love in those movies, particularly, in a weird way, the second one because when we made the second one, the first one was all but forgotten. It had been nine years since the first one. We like the joke, I don’t know if it’s true, but it’s “Before Sunrise is the least successful film of all time to ever spawn a sequel”. But we loved working together and felt like we had something else to say with these characters.
— Would you consider doing the trilogy? Doing a third installment on that series?
— My dream for us is to do five. That ultimately could be watched as one magnum opus on romantic love, visioning these characters at different moments, capturing different moments in their lives, through their ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s. I think a real big problem for Linklater is that there’s so much expectation attached to it now. People ask us about it all the time and I have people come up to me and say that they’ve got a good idea for what the third one should be. It creates a weird feeling. I feel like Rick wants to wait until everybody forgets about it. Maybe we’ll do a third one when we’re seventy.
— I’m just thinking about Jessie in the Sunrise-Sunset series and your character of Trofimov in The Cherry Orchard, saying that he’s not interested in love, his whole relationship with Anya. In your mind, do you think Trofimov will end up marrying Anya?
— Yes, I do. I do. I think when he calls love ‘banal’ he’s speaking about it the way Emerson would, that society’s definition of love is banal. That they’re not really interested in love. They compartmentalize love to be marriage or child-rearing or ‘you be the wife and I be the husband’ and this role playing out of what romantic love is supposed to be. I think Trofimov is not interested in that in the slightest and he’s not interested in defining himself that way. I also think, like a lot of men, he’s full of intellectual ideas until there’s a woman that he loves that needs something from him and then that guy could be saddled with three kids and a Baby Bjorn on his stomach in fifteen minutes, I think.
— It’s great that you’re joining the fraternity of Hobo covers. This issue, I’m working up an editorial based on a Joseph Campbell idea about private myths and public dreams. I have a quote from J.D. Salinger from Catcher in the Rye that struck me where he writes, “Many, many men have been as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily some of them kept records of their troubles. You learn from them if you want to. Just as some day if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal relationship. It isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.”
— I think that quote is absolutely beautiful. There is so much to be learned and there is so much suffering all over the world. Real physical suffering and real existential suffering and it’s been going on for a long time. There’s so much to be learned by it. You know, I really never read any Dostoevsky until a couple years ago. I just picked the shortest one, Notes from the Underground, and I was just floored by it. It’s amazing and then this year I made myself read Moby Dick. You read these things and then you realize why they’re famous. Just because you were taught them at school doesn’t mean they’re for intellectuals. Somewhere along the line this thing really moved some people and it moved them for a reason.
— I couldn’t agree with you more. My life is surrounded by books and I’ve had the good fortune to teach Dostoevsky at the university here. I used to say to students, there’s life having read these books and there’s life having not read these books. I can’t even imagine my life now having not read Crime and Punishment. The fact that one of us, a fellow human being, was able to delve so deep into our unconscious, the whole process that Raskolnikov goes through – that’s what keeps me going after all these years still.
— That’s what should keep us going, man, it’s the real dialogue. I know other people find ways of expressing things that happen to them not so literally as through song or poem or literature or performance. They manifest their stories and what happens to them and what they learned through their kids and through their friendships or whatever ways. But for me, art is more real than anything else.
— Yeah, absolutely.
— I was working with Joe Chaikin on a Sam Shepard play the day that the twin towers came down, you know. We cancelled that night’s show because of all the chaos there in the city and the next day we had a meeting. We had this big talk about whether or not we should go on that night because some of the cast felt it was inappropriate to act like nothing happened and how could we do this silly little play about fathers and sons when the world was falling down. And Joe, who had suffered a stroke and had aphasia, he spoke almost like as you imagine a Zen monk might speak. He just boiled every sentence down to its essence and he said to us, “Violence, not real. Violence happened long ago in the mind. Imagination is real. Fathers and sons heal. Fathers and sons love each other. Towers go back up. We must do the play. Must do the play.” I’ve just to come believe that this imagination is very real, thought does lead to action and the arts, it’s how our collective consciousness gets boiled to the top.
— Right.
— A lot has to happen in the world for a great novel like Brothers Karamazov to happen. Dostoevsky doesn’t exist unto himself. Bob Dylan doesn’t exist unto himself. This is the foam that spits off the top of the ocean.
— I read an interview you did a few years ago where you said that we live in a community which tries to box us all in, “like you’re a journalist, you just do this or that. You can’t also be a musician, you know. I just resent that; I think we’re all a lot more than that.” Yourself, you write, you act, you direct. You did your piece on Kris Kristofferson for Rolling Stone. You narrated The Last Beat, the documentary on Gregory Corso.
— Yeah.
— I suppose the media needs to pigeonhole people and sort of put them into a particular slot or whatever.
— It does only because it wants to sell shit. Everybody always wants to make money and that’s why they want to pigeonhole things. I don’t know if you’ve caught any of them but in this latest release of Dylan’s last record, there’s been a handful of interviews with Bob Dylan. There was a piece in Rolling Stone and there was a big interview in Mojo. I kind of feel about Dylan the way… You know, I’ve been studying Chekhov all year and he used to get so excited when a new Tolstoy novel would come out. I’m not comparing myself to Chekhov or anything; I’m just saying that’s the way I feel about Dylan. It’s so exciting to watch, like you said, watch a fellow human being succeed at such a level. He’s such a huge, tremendous talent over such a long period of time. To do so many things well, so many different kinds of music - and his book Chronicles was fantastic. I don’t want to misquote him, but it’s so obvious that guy believes in himself so much. I think so many of us are so dragged down by our insecurities and our fears of failure and our fear of being made fun of and our fear of being mocked that so many people end up not even trying. When I first published The Hottest State, it sounds weird to say, but that was the scariest thing that I’d ever done. It somehow pissed so many off that a young film actor would even try to do such a thing. But I knew that to be the grownup that I wanted to be, to be the adult I dreamed of being, I would have to have some other experiences besides just pretending to be other people in front of a camera. I knew it was important to me and I knew I had to do it and I was always surprised at what a problem so many people seemed to have to with it. How much we as a society and as a culture just really don’t want people to eat more of the pie than they damn well fuckin’ deserve, you know. One of the nice things about getting older is watching that kind of subside a little bit.
— You know, I live in Victoria here, we’ve got a lot of great used bookstores and I went downtown to track down your books. I had to go to four used bookstores. I finally came to Russell Books and found mint, first edition, hard copies with dust jackets of Ash Wednesday and The Hottest State. I thought, for you as an actor, a lot of people will know you from Training Day or will know you from Reality Bites or whatever, but here’s this whole other persona. Having conversations with the booksellers, all of them were very complimentary about the fact that these are solid novels. Writing The Hottest State particularly, and Ash Wednesday as the follow up, in terms of liberating yourself, like you say, becoming an adult and overcoming that fear and putting it out there, obviously it’s good for you. It’s what a person needs to do.
— Part of why I felt so good reading your little Emerson piece is I felt like “that guy really has his eye on the ball”. It doesn’t ultimately matter whether people think so-and-so is the greatest actor or this person is the greatest musician. There’s another reality that’s happening that is much more significant than the superficial one we immerse ourself in constantly. It was very interesting, in that same issue as your Emerson piece there was a piece on that Norwegian philosopher.
— Arne Naess.
— He was very interesting, too, because he was talking about the environmental crisis in relationship to how you live your whole life and viewing ourselves, as mankind, as some special entity on this planet as opposed to actually being a part of the planet. We’re so much more of one giant whole than we really can conceive of in our daily lives. When you remind yourself of that it gets much easier to be yourself and not really worry what the ramifications of that are.
— Joseph Campbell writes about the idea that we come from the earth and so, therefore, we are the eyes of the earth. We are the consciousness of the earth. That stuff just immediately penetrates me. It puts [aside] a lot of the daily superficiality and all the things that the ego is demanding. It allows you to put that aside and realize that you’re part of something so much larger and so much more interesting than just ambition and survival. I guess that’s what keeps us all going as far as trying to find ways to communicate to other people. Because, you know, it’s sort of lost if you just keep it to yourself.
— It’s so much fun to share. As a fan of Tape and as a film scholar you should really interview Linklater sometime.
— He would be right at the top of my list as someone that I would love to talk to about film.
— He would not disappoint, I swear. My collaboration with him over the years has been one of the most enriching, rewarding parts of my life. Not just my artistic life but my life. He really wouldn’t let you down. You know the way people talk about Scorsese with this encyclopedic knowledge or, you know, Dylan’s knowledge about music is stunning, well, Rick has that about film. His passion for it is so contagious and inspiring and he’s so interested in ideas that he’s one of those people that when you get off the phone with him or see him, you walk away excited about the rest of your life. I’ve never heard him say a negative word about anybody, particularly in relationship to the arts.
— He’s contributed so much. When I first saw Slackers, that was one of the films of that year that prompted me to stay interested in film.
— It’s so inspiring. You know that feeling you get when you stumble on a great poem or a great book or anything, where you feel like there’s some like-minded soul out there. It makes it all worth doing.
— You were talking about Bob Dylan earlier. I’ve been listening, like, nonstop. I’ve become almost obsessed with a couple songs on Tell Tale Signs, his Bootleg Volume 8, real muse songs, “Born in Time” and “Red River Shore”. They’re so autobiographical and I think Dylan’s talking much larger than just about a specific lost love or a woman. It’s great that you can put on a piece of music or watch a film and a whole part of you comes alive again.
— I was at a party the other day, speaking of that bootleg series, and a Dylan song came on that I’d never heard before. It’s “Cross the Green Valley”, do you know that one?
— I don’t know if I do. “Cross the Green Valley.”
— Did I just say the wrong title? Let me just look it up here. “Cross the Green Mountain”.
— “Cross the Green Mountain”, okay, I’ll look it up.
— Yeah, it’s on that same album. And I’ll listen to the ones that you cited.
— You’ve got [the films] Daybreakers, Brooklyn’s Finest and New York, I Love You all coming out later this year.
— New York, I Love You’s just a little short. Did you see that film Paris, Je T’aime?
— I did, yeah. Enjoyed that.
— Yes, well, this is just the New York City version of that. Brooklyn’s Finest is a film I did with the director of Training Day, Antoine Fuqua, and it’s kind of like the East Coast answer to Training Day. It all takes place in the hottest precinct in the United States in Brooklyn and we shot there last summer, absolutely phenomenal experience. I had a pretty great time doing Training Day. To be making a movie with Denzel in South Central in 2000 was an incredible experience. And this was the same. It’s amazing. The Nation of Islam was doing security for the movie and we were shooting in the projects and working with and meeting a lot of fascinating people. You know, there’s a lot of extreme poverty in New York City still. It’s something that I don’t see when I’m taking my kids to school. It was fascinating to make a movie there, get to work with a bunch of people from that neighbourhood. That was fun. Then Daybreakers is my attempt at a genre film. I haven’t really made a full-blown genre movie. These two twin brothers who sent me Daybreakers are big cinema geeks and they love movies and they really wanted me to play this vampire. And I really believe in them. I thought they were really gifted and they reminded me a lot of Joe Dante. You know, Joe really taught me about film. I haven’t done a lot of genre movies because it’s not the thing that most appeals to me. But I do have a love for it. I read comic books with the best of them when I was a kid and I have a certain love for it. And I had a ball making it. I think Brooklyn’s Finest is going to come out in December-ish and Daybreakers January-ish.
— I’m looking forward to seeing them because I’ve seen the Undead by the Spierig brothers.
— Oh, you did? So you know what I’m talking about, right?
— I do, like you say, they’re real cinema geeks and they’ve got a real feel for the medium. Daybreakers is set in the same time period as Gattaca, isn’t it?
— It’s a real spiritual brother of Gattaca. Like all really great genre films, it has a terrific underlying metaphor. It takes the future where almost everyone is a vampire. And the vampires are running out of humans. They’re trying to come up with a blood substitute, people are getting foreign blood – it’s exactly what we’re doing to the earth and it’s a great metaphor for oil and corporate greed and everything. The movie’s very funny in that way and it works on that level. It also works just as a thriller.
— I teach a course called “Film on the Future” and I include Gattaca in the lineup. It’s amazing how much stuff people can find in Gattaca; there’s so much subtext in that movie. It’s a classic journey film, with the shadow and the anima and the geometry in the film, the use of circles. Andrew Niccol’s got a real eye as a director.
— I feel like Andrew Niccol should have a government subsidy. He should get to do everything he wants to do. His trouble is that all his ideas are very expensive. Rick writes a script where it’s pretty easy to make the movie for two million bucks. Andrew’s ideas are very big but I think Andrew’s a genius. I think he’s like Stanley Kubrick, right, and I think Gattaca is one of the best first films of all time. That movie’s so well thought out and getting to work with him you understand how well thought out it is.
— I think that projection about working for corporations and the whole world within that framework makes you wonder if that hasn’t already happened.
— More and more it’s happening, people’s identity is wrapped up in the company they work for more than the country they come from. Sony executives in New York have a lot more in common with Sony executives in Japan than they do with a construction worker in Iowa. You know what I mean?
— Absolutely right. There’s an Aldous Huxley quote that I often find myself spouting that “the goal in life is to discover that you’ve always been where you were supposed to be”. That everything that you do, even a mistake, leads you to a place where you can look back and say that there was a plan and that everything has worked out the way that you’ve wanted it to. Looking back, starting with Dead Poets Society to where you are now in London, doing these plays and the variety of work that you’ve done – I guess as an artist one’s never really totally satisfied because the more you know the more you realize that you have to know – but you must be pretty happy with the path that you’ve found yourself on.
— It’s funny that you said that because if you do read Ash Wednesday you’ll find that I kind of spun that quote in my book. I do find that idea very moving, that even when really bad things are happening to you, you’re in the right spot. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with experiencing pain. It doesn’t mean you’re not supposed to be experiencing pain. In my own life, when I’ve gone through the more difficult periods of my life, you always have this feeling that somehow you lost the path, as if the path was supposed to be easy. The path isn’t. I mean, look at Nelson Mandela. You read his life story, you go, “It’s not a piece of cake to be Nelson Mandela.”
— No, exactly.
— This is a very significant human being who has suffered tremendously. We all want to get somewhere for free and we somehow think that maybe others are, that somehow, so-and-so, they get to do everything they want – as if we were pitted against one another. To answer your question… it pleases me that I’m not dead. It pleases me that you would take the time to ask me these questions, that I would be in this position that I would get to play the part of the artist being interviewed. It’s a thrilling role to get to play because it’s fun to be in the game and to be participating and it’s an honour. I try to look at it like that. But the bottom line is, the reason why I haven’t written a third book yet is – when I was younger I had a shitload of hubris. I loved the arts with such a passion and I loved doing it, but the older I get the more I really want to have something to say. The more of the really great performers I meet, the more I realize most of them aren’t that successful by society’s standards. There’s a lot of people who have mastered the craft of performance that are not on the 100 Most Successful People of the Year by Entertainment Weekly’s chart. The older you get, and the more I read, the more I want to write a really good book because the truth is there’s a lot of books out there that people should read before they read something else [laughs], you know, something by me. I have a friend of mine, he’s a musician who is very, very good. He gets so despondent because it’s so hard to get a record deal these days. Even if he had a record deal, walking into a place where they sell CDs and there’s just volumes and volumes of CDs – there’s even Neil Young records he hasn’t even listened to yet. Why the fuck should anybody buy one of his? You go on the Internet, it just seems like the world is full of all this noise and how could you possibly contribute. And yet we have to. We have to try. If Neil Young has something to say, so do we. So I am pleased just to be here. I was scared shitless when I was younger – the biggest fear about having success young, if you cite Reality Bites, being twenty-four years old and being put on a cover of magazines and stuff like that, you know, man, most people burn out. Most people are dead on drugs or lost their way or succumbed to vanity or cashed out. I’m grateful to be where I am. Did you get a chance to read that profile on Kristofferson?
— Just some stuff online. I haven’t read it in its entirety.
— I think you’d get a huge kick out of it. If you want, I could have some people send it to you.
— That would be fantastic.
— He’s such a fascinating example of someone who survived and he survived because he’s worked really hard to try to keep his aim true. What’s your goal, what’s your real goal - if your goal is to be a big shot, well, you may succeed but even in succeeding, you’ll fail. If your goal is to love and to participate in the arts and to be a part of that dance, nothing will stop you. Nothing will stop you. There’s always the rare bird, one-a-generation bird, who gets to be totally true to themselves and do it all for the right reasons and sell a million records, i.e. Bob Dylan. Most of us don’t get to be that. But it doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. You’ll see Kris is a really beautiful person. I think I largely did that to have an excuse to learn from him. I was kind of interested in how somebody becomes that person.
— He’s a prime example of a guy who set the pattern, someone who went from music into acting, and his persona, the traveling troubadour and the romantic and tough guy. He’s got a heroic status to him for sure.
— Yeah, he does. He does.
— I want to read you this line, see how this resonates after all these years. I love this line; it’s the final line from Ash Wednesday. “Floating down the front steps, a fresh gust of wind at my back, I felt new, like one or maybe all of us had been resurrected.” How does that resonate with you today in terms of what you were expressing with your character at the end of your second book?
— I was thinking a lot, at that time period, about becoming an adult, and really, like, a real adult. Shedding the superficial, childish ideas of what romantic love is, being a person, how to define success, how to define yourself in context of a relationship. It’s strange to me because so much of that book is about the kind of birth I felt at being married and committing myself to a family. And a family that ultimately fell apart shortly after [laughs] I finished the book. I felt like, you turn left and you immediately bang right into a wall, a wall you didn’t even know was there. It’s funny to me that I could write about feeling newborn at a moment that I know in the back of my head that I was newborn and presented in front of the firing squad [laughs]. I’m obviously joking but that’s what that thing makes me think of.
— I remember you talking to Charlie Rose around that time, you were talking about the fear of Job, being set up with a great fall and when does leprosy strike. I think you were talking about it in a humorous vein but that idea that when things are seemingly going well, or even exceptionally well or whatever, there’s always that thought in our minds, that “when’s the other shoe going to drop”.
— I remember feeling this way during the Clinton administration when every newspaper was full about him sleeping with that girl and the semen-stained dress and this stuff. I was thinking ‘this is what a country talks and thinks about during peace and prosperity?’. We’re turning in on ourself. Then look at the next ten years, okay, great, now we’ve got an economic depression. I often feel that when things are going well in your life is the time to do the real work on yourself. You’re going to die. I’m going to die. The pages of Hobo magazine are going to be dust. There’s no maybe there. All that’s going to happen. There’s nothing wrong with it happening. That’s what’s supposed to happen. I think that’s the thing that I kind of have taken to now, just ‘cause my marriage fell apart and I felt like I got, you know, hit by a truck. I was supposed to get hit by a truck [laughs]. There was a big lesson I needed to learn. Something I didn’t know and that there was no way I was going to learn without that truck. You know what I’m saying?
— I do. It was an interesting interview with Charlie. You were talking about “luck is the residue of design” and you were also talking about politics and the Clinton era and all the rest of it and saying that government is not something that you would ever see yourself really investing your consciousness in. How do you feel now with Obama and stuff? Has he given you more optimism towards the political realm at all?
— It gives me optimism - the term before, if somebody told me that guy was going to get elected president, I would say there was no way this country was ready for it. I guarantee I would have laughed. I remember I was in South Africa making a movie years ago and getting to listen to people talk about Nelson Mandela, he was the president at the time, how much they loved him and how just a few years before that he would be president was unimaginable. I love it because it lets you know that the unimaginable is always happening. It’s always possible and we really don’t know. It does make me optimistic, you know, America’s a weird country but it seems like it operates like a sailboat a little bit. We never go one direction; we never go straight anywhere. We kind of go a little bit over here and then a little bit over there. But hopefully we’re moving forward. I’m optimistic in that he seems like a real leader and a real person and I’m impressed that somebody like this could exist in this environment and that he’s been elected president. I think it would be a huge mistake to expect him to be Jesus and make everyone happy. I’ve got a bunch of leftie friends that are incredibly disappointed in him already. And I’ve got a bunch of rightie friends who are so quickly talking about, “See, he’s a failure. He’s a failure.” It’s so disappointing to me to see people almost seeming to want it to be a failure.
— I guess, the media, that’s what they live off.
— Oh, they just create it. They just create it. They want a story and so at first the story is he’s Jesus. He’s going to save us all. Actually, he’s a big fat liar. Neither is true.
— I feel as a Canadian that the shift from Bush to Obama was a kind of cleansing in a way.
— It’s something that makes you think anything could happen. It makes you keep an open mind and an open heart. I’ve spent a lot of time in Canada over the years and I think Canada’s an amazing place. Where in Canada are you from?
— I’m in Victoria, on Vancouver Island, about an hour and a half ferry ride from Vancouver.
— Are you there right now?
— Yeah, I’m in Victoria right now.
— And what time is it there?
— It is now twenty-five after nine in the morning.
— Oh, wow. Well, thanks for speaking to me so early in the morning.
— Yeah, no problem. It’s a bit of a shift because I’m morning time, you’re afternoon time.
— I find it very difficult, you know, I have a whole new compassion in my heart for being interviewed because [of] interviewing Kristofferson. It’s very difficult to get an interesting interview, get people talking their best. And it would be very hard to do it over the phone at eight o’clock in the morning so I’m impressed.
— Well, I’m more than impressed and I really can’t thank you enough for being so forthcoming.
— A good interview, for me, I feel like ‘this is what it would be like to meet that person.’
— Exactly, yeah.
— ‘Cause, you know, it’s always a little bit of a lie, whenever you read a profile on anybody, that there is any narrative to any of our lives. As a writer when you’re writing the profile you have to kind of create a narrative. “He was born in Austin and then he did this and then he was in Dead Poets Society and then he was in Training Day and then he got married and then he got divorced and now he’s in London.” And you make it like there’s a beginning, middle and an end when, of course, life’s never really happened that way.
— So you’re going to be in London until the 15th of August and then you return to New York City?
— Yeah, I’m really looking forward to it. On the 15th we leave here and we close. For two nights we do the plays in Epidaurus, Greece at the oldest theatre on the planet Earth and I’m really looking forward to it. It starts at ten o’clock at night because it’s so hot there and we do it just like the Greeks did. Just with candles.
— Oh, brilliant.
— Oh, it should be so much fun. It’s for ten thousand people. They apparently designed the theatre in such a way that it’s the best acoustics in the world. Everyone can hear you. You can whisper on the stage and they can hear you in the back row, or so I’m told. I’ll tell you more about it later but I’m really looking forward to it.
— And when’s that going to be? Right at the end of August?
— Yeah, August, that’s when we finish. We perform at Epidaurus on the 21st and 22nd and then I head back to New York City and I’m going to direct a Sam Shepard play this winter. Aside from that, I don’t know what I’m going to do.
— Well, that sounds like a good move doing some Sam Shepard.
— Yeah. I enjoy it and there’s a play I’ve always loved of his called The Lie of the Mind. I think I read it when I was about twenty-two. I loved it so much and I feel like I’m finally old enough to direct it. So I’m going to do that and hopefully I’ll probably do another.
— All right.
— All right, well, I’ve enjoyed talking to you.
— It’s just been a total pleasure talking to you.
— Okay, all right. See you, man.
The author of Leaves of Grass wrote in his final year, 1891, that the strongest and sweetest songs remain yet to be sung. It was a distinct honor and privilege to catch up to him in 2012 and investigate further.
[Interview by Brian Hendricks / Illustration by Hugo Guinness]
— Where do we find the ‘truth’?
— Re-examine all that you have been told... dismiss that which insults your soul.
— Could you elaborate on that?
— I am too not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world. I exist as I am, that is enough.
— What is your main function as a writer?
— A writer can do nothing for men more necessary, satisfying, than just simply to reveal to them the infinite possibility of their own souls. The mark of a true writer is their ability to mystify the familiar and familiarize the strange. To have great poets, there must be great audiences.
— Are there still things worth writing about, issues that can instill real change and enlightenment?
— The strongest and sweetest songs yet remain to be sung. That you are here—that life exists, and identity; the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. Oh, to be alive in such an age, when miracles are everywhere, and every inch of common air throbs a tremendous prophecy, of greater marvels yet to be. But besides that, a morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.
— You seem to have an elevated optimism that is perhaps not as common among the rest of us?
— I celebrate myself, and sing myself, and what I assume you shall assume, for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. Henceforth I ask not good fortune. I myself am good fortune.
— I appreciate that we may share the same enthusiasm but do you ever feel as though you’ve been blessed with a more active spirit?
— My spirit has passed in compassion and determination around the whole earth. I have looked for equals and lovers and found them ready for me in all lands, I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them.
— Do you ever feel depressed or even defeated?
— If the wind will not serve, take to the oars. To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle.
— How do we overcome the resistance of those who don’t believe in or support our creative efforts?
— Have you learned the lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons from those who braced themselves against you, and disputed passage with you?
— How would you define a perfect writer?
— A perfect writer would make words sing, dance, kiss, do the male and female act, bear children, weep, bleed, rage, stab, steal, fire cannon, steer ships, sack cities, charge with cavalry or infantry, or do anything that man or woman or the natural powers can do.
— Is there a secret to writing you could share with us?
— The secret of it all, is to write in the gush, the throb, the flood, of the moment—to put things down without deliberation without worrying about their style—without waiting for a fit time or place. I always worked that way. I took the first scrap of paper, the first doorstep, the first desk, and wrote—wrote, wrote… by writing at the instant the very heartbeat of life is caught.
— What is it that keeps us going, keeps us motivated to invent and create new ideas and stories? What hope can you provide the artist from your own experience?
— Say on, sayers! sing on, singers! Delve! mould! pile the words of the earth! Work on, age after age, nothing is to be lost, It may have to wait long, but it will certainly come in use, When the materials are all prepared and ready, the architects shall appear.
— And writing as an extension of our life. What is the main key to living to the fullest?
— This is what you shall do: Love the earth and the sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, reexamine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.
— How do we reach our potential? How do we access our inner hero?
— There is no trade or employment but the young person following it may become a hero.
— Do we need teachers to guide us and steer us in the right direction?
— He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher. Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you. You must travel it by yourself. It is not far. It is within reach. Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know. Perhaps it is everywhere—on water and land.
— What is the basis of a life well lived?
— To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a little better place than we found it, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life breathed easier because you lived. This is to have succeeded.
— How do we gain the necessary knowledge, wisdom, to flourish and succeed in a world so burdened with information and choices?
— Wisdom is not finally tested in the schools, wisdom cannot be passed from one having it to another not having it, wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof.
— Could you provide any directions, a road map, that has served you well in that quest for wisdom? Something we could apply to our own journey?
— Not I—not anyone else, can travel that road for you, you must travel it for yourself.
"Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position, but certainty is an absurd one." - Voltaire
The thrill of anticipation, the mystery of the unknown, the open road, mistakes as portals of discovery, the inevitability of change, purpose from chaos, questions leading to answers, failure as the threshold of knowledge. All of these conditions inform the life of the adventurer, the human being who is engaged in becoming. The beauty of uncertainty is that it prepares us to embrace life in the face of death. Allows us the strength to deal with the freedom to choose. To willingly exchange the fear of uncertainty for the security of certainty is to admit defeat. To surrender to the fear of actually living your life. As T. S Eliot observed, “Where is the life we have lost in living?” Nothing moves forward except by the craving to seek certainty from uncertainty.
The beauty of uncertainty is that it motivates us to seek certainty. We are compelled to replace doubt with conviction, to replace confusion with clarity, to be more fearful of old ideas instead of new ones. Nothing is more disparaged than the person who is lost, hesitant, and anxious. Yet the true path to fulfillment comes from these conditions. Uncertainty becomes truly beautiful when connected with the certainty that there is a better life beyond the life that is known. The artist, scientist, entrepreneur, athlete, and traveller: all embrace uncertainty as their muse. What is going to happen next is more enticing than what is happening now. The thrill of anticipation, the mystery of the unknown, the open road, mistakes as portals of discovery, the inevitability of change, purpose from chaos, questions leading to answers, failure as the threshold of knowledge. All of these conditions inform the life of the adventurer, the human being who is engaged in becoming. The beauty of uncertainty is that it prepares us to embrace life in the face of death. Allows us the strength to deal with the freedom to choose. To willingly exchange the fear of uncertainty for the security of certainty is to admit defeat. To surrender to the fear of actually living your life. As T. S Eliot observed, “Where is the life we have lost in living?” Nothing moves forward except by the craving to seek certainty from uncertainty.. Read more
